Memories and Dreams
by Degenerate Scumbag
Summary: Everyone has regrets, and Sal Fisher has unfinished business. Risks are taken when all efforts to stop the cult turned futile, causing everyone to question their own moral compasses. An alternate, darker ending to what I assume Steve will do. This is the ending that I think is the most realistic. Be warned there is graphic swearing and violence. (AshxSal, platonic LarryxSal).


If Ashley Campbell had gotten an ounce of sleep after Sal's execution she certainly had no recollection of it. Each day was spent in the treehouse with the ghost of Larry in silence, and she drifted between hallucinatory dreams and vivid images of the day at such a constant that the two felt indistinguishable from one another. As much as Larry wanted to comfort his beloved friend he truly felt invisible, even if he knew she acknowledged his presence. The air was so thick it could be cut with a knife. Within that air Ashley breathed in an incredulous amount of information regarding the history of The Devourer of God Cult. The threads woven through the dark web choked her out of any desire for food or water. Larry would bring her meals but she would leave them to rot. Night and day blended together. She was losing her grip quicker than she could find leads on how to reverse Todd's condition.

"You should get some sleep Ash. You've been without sleep for over 48 hours."

"Shut up Larry." She kept her words short and coarse. Her plan was to revive Sal. In order to do so she needed to know the mind of a man who has been lost for quite some time. Todd was institutionalized, but still in contact with The Red Demon. He was the host. If Ash could somehow bring Todd back then he could feed her everything he knew about The Red Demon's knowledge, as they shared a singular mind and knowledge for so long. The cult's dark prophet would know more about reanimation than any paper on it's followers. If Ashley was to truly undergo the penalty for letting her friend die, then she would offer up her suffering for him. It didn't matter if her intentions for curing Todd were immoral. She knew she was doing the right thing. She was doing everything for Sal, and she had to. No one else could.

"I just don't think this is healthy-"

"Oh you're one to talk about health Larry. Killing yourself isn't the best way to live I must say." Larry was physically incapable with taking it personally considering the state that Ashley was in. She was sick, clearly. When Sal died she immediately became incoherent with her words and aggressive towards Larry, huddling up in the treehouse as if it was the entire world. Larry searched the Addison Apartments for anything he could retrieve to help speed up his friend's investigation. He even went down into the apartment basement, where he had been years before, ironically enough on a search of his own. He was searching for Ashley. Even though she was found, when he watched her lose herself in her own guilt so terribly. . .he thought he had lost her again.

"Ash. . .Ash. . .Ash!"

"What?!"

"Your nose is bleeding." She looked down at her papers. Larry was right. She was bleeding so heavily that a hole had soaked right through the paper, but she was too obsessed to notice. She grabbed a pocket tissue pack from her jacket pocket and leaned forward. Larry came over and wiped off her books for her. Ashley remained silent, making no motion to even move the messy brown hair that covered her face as she leaned over. She knew that her ability to work was deteriorating but what choice did she have? Nobody could do this but her. Frustration welled up and Larry took notice in her change of expression. It tore him apart.

"Have you even asked Sal if he wants to come back?" He asked. Ashley turned to him with a quizzical expression painted on her. How could she have seen Sal's ghost? How would Sal know where she was? Could she see him again? Larry's one question was singular in form but multiple in meaning for the woman. She couldn't even begin a proper response. It was as if staying cooped up in the treehouse for so long had been eating away at her brain cells, only to spit them back out at her after they had 'Sal' printed all over them. She dabbed her book with a tissue while struggling to respond to the stunning question.

"What does that even mean?"

"Did you even consider if he wants to come back?"

"No Larry, I haven't seen him at all."

"Rosenberg broke the curse that bound me to my place of death, but that happened years before Sal was even dead. He's here, as in the execution room. I had assumed you went to him and asked before you came up here."

"No, I. . .his ghost must not have returned until a few minutes after he was executed. By then I was already on my way."

"So you've been doing this without even asking him."

"Well. . .I. . ." Ashley trailed off in search for a defense. She had just assumed Sal would want to come back to the world of the living. He wasn't a suicide death like Larry, his ghost was the product of a misuse of capital punishment. Sal Fisher was a mass murderer by definition so a prolonged jail time would only be lawful. The morality of his actions were questionable to outsiders but there was no reason to go so far. In his mind, Sal was doing the world a favor. The Devourers of God had gotten their way. If he hadn't slaughtered the entirety of the Addison Apartments then the curse the cult attached to the forsaken souls would only spread across the world until every single person was damned to hell. He wasn't a dangerous man with ambiguous intentions. In a twisted way he was the hero to 7 billion people. Even if his life would have been spent in a prison cell there was no reason to withhold his right to live.

"He was executed Larry! S-sal was-hopeless, helpless! If you had seen the look on his face when the jury announced the verdict-"

"Ash, he wears a prosthetic mask. Poker face is his default expression." Ashley kept quiet. What was Larry trying to say-that she was doing it for herself? She didn't know. She couldn't tell what he was thinking.

"W-what are you getting at? Are you saying Sal wanted to die?"

"No, I'm his step-brother you idiot. I'm asking if you're doing this for Sal or doing this for you." That was surprising. It had never occured to Ashley in a million years that Larry would accuse her of doing something so selfish. It broke her, then engraved her, partially because she couldn't say it was the ladder without being unsure. In her mind it was all for Sal. It was all for him. Always. Even so, that was the ghost of his step-brother revealing her true intentions to herself, and she felt it would be even more egotistical to assume she knew better than Sal's family. Still, she wasn't fully ready to admit to herself that she had skewed intentions.

What she did admit was that she wanted Sal Fisher alive. Who wouldn't? Anyone and everyone that met the young man was immediately smitten with him. If you need proof all you have to do is ask Travis Phelps. Sal is an amazing person, described by many as a gorgeous soul. His voice was deep and coarse but his words were gentle like a dainty flower. Music sounded all the more sweeter when he played it, no matter how heavy the metal was. Without his mask his glow still made his disfigured face beautiful so much that Ashley would try to talk him into going without it, much to his reluctance. He was her best friend, plain and simple. The woman cupped her cheeks in her hands and began to rub her face in an effort to wipe away the yucky tiredness that glued to her.

"I. . .I want Sal back."

"That's pretty obvious."

"Have. . .have you talked to him? Ashley asked. Larry glanced to the side, biting his lip in apparent. . .shame? Why wouldn't Larry talk to Sal? Ashley began to ask herself those questions as Larry's change in expression only intrigued her even more.

"No, I haven't actually. I have a feeling he doesn't want to see me. When he was locked up I didn't visit him once. I had failed him-I didn't know what to say after that. He's going to kill me when he sees me, and I'm already dead." Ashley's bleeding heart instinctively went to defending Larry's actions.

"Well It's not like I've done any better-

"Yes, yes you have! You only testified against him to save him from capital punishment by getting him in an institution. Obviously you failed but you tried. Sal knows that. I'm. . .I'm just a terrible step-brother." Larry's explanation of Ashley's actions came as a pleasant surprise to Ashley. She had never thought of her actions in such sensible terms. To her, it was always that she had simply testified against her best friend in court. There was no more twisting it or sugar-coating it to make the testimony all the merrier. However, Larry's take on Ashley's motives did make sense to her. Ashley certainly did question the morality of what she did while she was doing it, but she never did it to hurt Sal intentionally. All that time she had told herself that he just needed help.

"Larry, you aren't just Sal's step-brother, you're his brother. Like his spiritual other half, platonic soulmate or something. He won't think of you as any less because of your choices."

Larry still wasn't buying it, and it showed in his posture. His relationship with Sal was like nothing that Ashley had ever seen. They were never seen without each other to the point that they mimicked identical twins, even though they weren't related. Larry's eyes were heartbreaking to Ashley.

". . .Look, you won't be a terrible brother if you agree to come with me to see him. Honestly, I think you're right. I'm definitely missing something," Ash said whilst keeping her eyes glued to her computer screen which displayed an ominous profile of Jim Johnson. There was such little information on him across the interwebs. There was too little information for it to be an unintentional error. Sal knew more than them. He wasn't Todd smart, but he was very bright. Nobody knew who had connections to Addison Apartments like he did. Ashley was getting nowhere. She stood up.

"Where are you going?" Larry asked.

"To take a shower. Start walking to the Nockfell Prison. Is the Gearboy still in the chest?"

"Uh, yeah." Ashley walked across the tree house to the wooden chest where the Gearboy rested, virtually untouched for the last three years. Among many other artifacts that accumulated she came across a picture of Sal along with the rest of the gang. Travis was accidentally shot in the background of the group photo, angrily chewing what looked to be a bologna sandwich. He was a weird kid, but he was present to hear Sal's testimony. Next to him was Maple. Maple. . .Ashley couldn't tell her what they were doing. If Sal did end up coming back, Ashley knew Maple would do anything within her abilities to make sure that his liberation of death wouldn't last for more than three minutes.

"We can't tell Maple we're doing this," Ashley said while shaking her head. Sal murdered the woman's husband and daughter. She knew it didn't matter to Maple if Sal was being forced to or not.

"That's understandable-wait!" Larry clapped his hands together after taking them out of his pocket for the first time in. . .actually, Ashley had never seen his hands outside of his pockets.

"What?"

"The day Chug and Soda died, I saw them from the other side while they were still alive. Their souls were not infected like the rest of the ones at the apartments. I don't think they were affected by the curse?"

"How? It affected every soul in the apartment except for Sal-

"I just know it. There's no way Sal could have known, everyone looked the same from the living world. On the other side though, everyone that was affected was wrapped in this black goop and their eyes glowed. They just looked more like. . .normal. If there's a way to bring Sal back, then-" Ashley's face lit up for the first time in months.

"Oh my God! Larry you genius!"

"First let's see if it's possible. We won't get Maple's hopes up only to have them squashed by the reality that we actually can't revive the dead."

"Right, right. I'll start going right now!" As soon as Ashley left the tree house, Larry picked up the photograph she had left atop the wooden planks. It was their last lunch together as seniors. Sal looked uncomfortably stiff as if he had frozen up when Ash put her arm around him. Sal had a preference for wearing his pigtails even as a young adult on the account that it made him look "like a creepy little weirdo" when combined with his mask. Larry himself was doing some ridiculous gang symbol on the ground in front of them while Todd crossed his arms, keeping the cross monotone face he kept in every picture. Neil was next to him, obviously trying to get him to smile. Chug and Maple were holding hands. There was also. . .a dark patch. Under closer inspection Larry found it to be a scratchy-looking mass of blackness with scarlet eyes. It was the Red Eyed Demon, not that Ash could see the film from the other side. He slipped it into his pocket and shoved it into the back of his mind.

Ashley's ride home was noisy-well, it was louder than motorcycle rides usually usually are. The conversation with Larry hinted at a future of getting the gang together, which would prove difficult. Although Neil was present in court, Ashley had not spoken a word to him. He looked as if talking was the last thing on his mind, and the first thing was making sure Sal stayed in solitary confinement. Of course Ashley would compromise for that outcome instead of the one Sal received, although the look on Neil's face gave Ashley the idea that his motives weren't that of saving an innocent man from execution. Maple was a wild card at that point. Regardless of the possibility of it, there was no way Ashley could say for sure if reviving the widow's husband and daughter was even moral.

There was one person in the back of Ashley's mind that she knew to be a dependable asset. Travis Phelps, the uptight son of a strict protestant preacher who grew up with an ambiguous moral compass, blackened rage, and a little crush on Sal Fisher. Although she didn't converse with him as much as Sal Fisher had, she knew that he would drop everything to help her friend in any way he could. Despite kindly declining Travis' feelings, Sal always made it a point to hang out with Travis whenever he saw the blonde sitting alone at lunch, and to give Travis all of his bologna sandwiches after the bologna incident their junior year. Sal genuinely enjoyed being around Travis and valued him as a person despite Travis punching him in the face for "being a faggot" ten minutes before Sal found Travis' love letter in the trash. He was just an incredibly sweet soul. If they were going into the uncharted territory of reanimation they should bring alone someone vested in being righteous. A priest would suit that role well.

If there was one more person that was weighing on Ashley's mind, it was the bald man sitting behind Neil. Larry and Ashley were very close, and Ashley had memorized the face of Larry's father just from photographs. The man in court looked nearly identical to Larry's father right down to the mustache that he last was seen sporting in worn photographs from over a decade ago. The doppelganger was so indistinguishable in appearance that it was almost too surreal to be Jim Johnson himself. It did make a bit of sense that he would be there, as his ex-wife was a victim of Sal's murders. However, if the man truly did just leave, there was no way she wouldn't see him with the policemen searching for Larry's dead body. His only son committed suicide and the closest he ever got to the town was attending court for a virtually unrelated issue. Ashley couldn't talk to Larry about it. . .he would probably get upset. Actually, Sal would be the one to know who that man was. He always knew more than he was letting on, and it showed in his final testimony.

#

Larry faded into the wall seemingly losing his physical form after following Ashley into the building.

"Larry?" She whispered, preferring not to draw attention to herself. She felt him pull on her arm.

"I don't want to scare anyone so I've got one foot in the other side over here. Don't worry, I can still hear you. Just don't make them think you're insane or you'll end up like Sal. Of course if you want to get in the room that bad, that just might be the way to-" Ashley cut off Larry by aggressively adjusting the sleeve of the arm he was holding. When walking to the front desk she made eye contact with an officer who looked to be in her late thirties. Her hair reeked of coffee and nicotine but her smile showed no falter. Her name tag read as officer Nellie. Ashley nodded at her and walked towards the prison frontdesk with confident strides. If she was going somewhere she wasn't supposed to be, the trick would be to make people believe that she was the only place she could be. The woman's eyes snapped wide open at the rare occasion of a visitor.

"Hello, My name is Ashley Campbell."

"Oh, Ashley!" Of course the woman at the prison frontdesk knew who Ashley was. Any effort to keep the famous killer from being executed was done solely by her. There was no one else on his side. When the woman with the wrinkled nose straightened out her badge, Ashley saw it as a subliminal threat. It came without saying that Ashley's controversial stance on the fate of the "Sally Face Killer" had provided her with lots of heat from those following the story and case. Ashley felt Larry put his hand on her shoulder, although he remained invisible as to not draw attention to himself. It's as if he was telling her to let it slide, and thus she followed suit.

"Officer, Sal Fisher was my best friend-"

"Oh, I know. I've seen you on the news."

"-and I was just wondering if I could. . .see where he last was. I think it would help me cope to pay my respects there."

"I'm sorry, but I can't let you back there." Damn, she was afraid of that. There had to be some way to get back there. For her there were no other options. Upon searching the room to find a tangible excuse, she instead found her eyes rested on the Officer's computer background. It was a painting.

"Wanderer above the Sea of Frog?" Ashley asked rhetorically. Officer Nellie turned around to look back at her screensaver backdrop.

"Oh yes, I just adore the works of Friedrich. How did you know the name of the painting? Do you have an appreciation for art such as I?

"Well, I don't mean to toot my own horn here, but I'm actually an art student," Ashley smiled coyly. She could hear Larry roll his eyes at her fibbing. She left art school nearly a month ago. She couldn't truly play the artist card without stretching it out a little bit, but Ashley showed no signs of wavering on it. Officer Nellie's eyes lit up in excitement. A young artist was in her presence. Right then she stood up out of her chair, completely blocking the painting of the man looking down at the mountains.

"Really? How wonderful!"

"I have some pictures of my art saved to my cell," Ashley smiled. She could hear Larry groan at her boasting while walking in circles. He was getting harder and harder to ignore. When the woman looked over the desk, Ashley made it a point to bring up her best work.

"I do landscape paintings as well. I can paint you something if you'd like. I'll even do it for free."

"Free? Really?"

"Of course. It's the least I can do to thank you for defending our country," Ash smiled.

"OH COME ON!" She heard Larry yell. The policewoman's eyes twinkled at the young woman. Such elegant art from such an elegant lady. It seemed criminal of her to assume such a lovely girl had bad intentions, so she wrote her number on a notecard and held Ashley's hand. In return Ashley smiled while Larry mumbled "You've got to be kidding me" over and over to himself in the background. They were having a moment! How was that so abominable? It's not as if Ashley was lying about the free commission. She would actually paint for the woman. After all, painting was a hobby she indulged in every day. It would do her no harm, and it would give officer Nellie the false lead that the two girls were friends.

"Sweetie you're good to go. I, officer Nellie, give you permission to go and pay respects to your dear friend. Call me when you're done with your art. I can tell you have a wonderful future ahead of you dear."

"Your painting will be even greater than that of Friedrich! I'll make sure of it!" She beamed. With that the two women shared a nod and Ashley was directed to the left. From there it was a matter of following the maps and maintaining the confidence of someone who wasn't sneaking around. There were so many twists and turns in the building that Larry and Ashley felt as though it was intentionally trapping them inside. They soon remembered that unlike the Addison Apartments, Nockfell Prison was a normal prison that was not haunted at all. Walls and rooms became repetitive to the point of mimicking an optical illusion, and Ashley felt that she was backtracking more than moving forward.

"I thought you said you saw the room he was executed in?" Larry asked.

"I did, but there were a lot of people around there as well. At this point I don't know how we'll be able to-" Ashley stopped talking. Her feet halted at an immediate stop, pointed squarely at the door of the goal. Shivers coursed through her body and suddenly her skin felt tight. The position she was in. . .she was there just days earlier banging on the door and screaming so hard she lost her voice from those few seconds. It became an enormous struggle to keep herself from indulging in heavy flashbacks of watching a man get electrocuted while holding the evidence that he was of no evil. Larry's eyes lowered as he could tell by Ash's reaction that they had reached the right room. Ash brought a shaky hand to the door only to tighten her grip when the knob wouldn't turn.

"Locked," she spat painfully. Larry shrugged before walking through the wall and opening the door from the inside. Ash made no comment, keeping her eyes stuck on the chair as if prying them away was impossible. It was Sal's chair. Sal. Sal. She removed the Gearboy from her pocket and turned back to Larry.

"How does this work?"

"Let me do it," he nodded before snatching it from Ashley's clammy fingers. After examining it he began to press a series of buttons that looked from the outside as if he was just button-mashing. Ashley's nose crinkled as she watched how very _not_ methodical Larry's methods were and how his face was that of someone who was concentrating on some very complicated formula. In the middle of this mashing, a green light slowly began to emit from the device. Then came the neon green static that blinded Ashley enough so she had to look away. Maybe Sal's prosthetic mask blocked some of his vision in his left eye. None of her eyes were glass so she had to take double the force. When it was over, she turned around to find Sal standing only a mere few feet away.

He kept his prosthetic mask on and his long messy hair hung over it in strings. His cuffs were broken although still around his wrist, and his orange jumpsuit was torn. He looked like a shorter, sadder, more blue-haired Jason cosplay, but that was surprisingly accurate. Sal Fisher was authentic, creepy or not. Nobody was more real than him when he was there, basking in the awe held by his two companions. After being unexpectedly zapped from the other side he was visibly out of breath. His voice was low which was a rarity for someone of his height. Ashley remembers the first time she heard him speak. It surprised her so much mostly due to the fact that as a child Sal dressed in a more gender ambiguous fashion. This made sense considering how little Sal cared about social constructs regarding what made someone male or female.

For almost two seconds Sal and Ashley kept an insanely intense eye contact. Even though Ashley couldn't fully see Sal's expression under the mask, she compromised by showing enough emotion for the two of them. Instantly after the man came back Ashley had begun to sniffle like a little kid. After registering the woman's tears that were directed towards him, Sal's eyes widened. He almost looked as if he was going to console her when a very familiar ghost caught his eye. After what felt like forever, Sal got on his toes to peer over her shoulder at Larry who had his hands in his pockets, trying to look for something to keep his eyes occupied. Sal winced and spoke his light New Jersey accent through gritted and ground teeth.

"I'm gonna kill you."


End file.
